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First Health Care Amendment Passes, Guaranteeing Coverage For Women's Preventive Services
Sens. David Vitter (R-LA) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
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An amendment to the Senate health care bill, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), became the first amendment voted on in the Senate.
Mikulski's amendment requires insurers to cover preventive care and screenings for women, at no cost to the patient. The amendment passed 60 to 39.
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) attached a secondary amendment to Mikulski's last night, which states that new mammogram guidelines released this year by the U.S Preventive Service Task Force cannot prevent women from receiving mammograms.
Mikulski's amendment relies on guidelines from the Health Resources and Services
Administration, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, to determine which services are covered.
Late update: The Senate just defeated the second amendment, this one introduced by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), voting 59 to 41.
Murkowski's amendment would have prevented the HHS from using guidelines from the Preventive Service Task Force to deny preventive service including mammograms. It would also prohibit the government from defining abortion as a preventive service.
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sunnysteve
December 3, 2009 12:33 PM
Please note that when a Republican submits a serious amendment, it gets voted on, and can be passed.
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jimbomoron
December 3, 2009 12:55 PM
How wonderful it is that the Senate is now on record saying that every American has a right to ineffective treatment! I can't wait for everyone's premiums to rise by 50 percent because the public option and insurance companies are required to cover ineffective treatment.
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ilovebacon
December 3, 2009 1:05 PM in reply to jimbomoron
shut your pie hole, troll.
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jimbomoron
December 3, 2009 1:36 PM in reply to ilovebacon
Interesting way of responding to facts.
If one of the goals of the bill is to reduce health care costs, isn't refusing to pay for ineffective treatment a good way to make health insurance more affordable for everyone?
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stefsstuff
December 3, 2009 1:47 PM in reply to jimbomoron
So mamograms are ineffective?
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JohnW1141
December 3, 2009 1:14 PM in reply to jimbomoron
jimbo,
um, what ineffective treatment is that?
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jimbomoron
December 3, 2009 1:29 PM in reply to JohnW1141
Treatment that has a 1 in 1,904 effectiveness rate.
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Beagle
December 3, 2009 2:15 PM in reply to jimbomoron
What if that 1 person is your mother, sister, daughter, wife....?
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Lycurgus
December 3, 2009 2:46 PM in reply to jimbomoron
Jimbomoron,
I'm all for science based medical decisions, but the problem here is that the cutoff seems so arbitrary. What makes 1 in 1,904 an unacceptable rate for the ages of 40-49, and 1 in 1,339 an acceptable rate for women 50-59.
There may be some math somewhere regarding the costs, both economic and health wise, for false positives, but I haven't seen it.
That said, I can't see a good reason to make it possible to restrict women from getting the scan if they and they think it is a good idea after consulting with their doctor.
However, you may simply be a troll and not care. I don't know.
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NitPicker1
December 4, 2009 9:31 AM in reply to Lycurgus
The report did take into account "health-wise" costs (as you put it) - both mental and physical repercussions of false positives and (more controversially) the overtreatment of low-risk cancers that are found through routine screening.
But by mandate the PSTF does not consider economic costs.
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NitPicker1
December 4, 2009 10:16 AM in reply to Lycurgus
That actually is the recommendation of the task force - that screening be decided on a case-by-case basis, with the woman in consultation with her doctor.
As things stand now, clinical measures of "quality of care" grade doctors on (among other things) the percentage of their female patients over 40 who receive mammograms. (Check out the Agency for Healthcare Research and Policy website
http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/guidetoq/guidetoq6.htm - which still illustrates the point with a vignette about a 45 year old woman whose early stage cancer is diagnosed through a screening mammogram. Yes, this is the Agency that the task force reports to!)
The new screening guidelines seem to have been intended to give low-risk women the option to "opt out" of annual screening, not to deny mammogram screening to those who really should be getting it. Anyway that's my take from reading the report and supporting docs myself, not (obviously) from the news coverage.
By the way I do agree with you that the numbers are pretty arbitrary, even more so when you see how far removed from the raw data the meta-analysis is.
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Salena
December 3, 2009 1:56 PM in reply to JohnW1141
How about you let women decide what they think is best for themselves? If a woman knows that she's at high risk for breast cancer, perhaps because her mother/aunt/grandmother/sister had it at a younger age than 50, she should have the OPTION of being tested WITH coverage.
Yes, the recommendation for when [i]most[/i] women should start getting test has changed, so presumably fewer women will take advantage of insured mammograms in their 40s, but to take away coverage is dangerous to those who need it.
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Salena
December 3, 2009 1:57 PM in reply to Salena
Sorry, meant to reply to jimbomo.
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cube3u
December 3, 2009 1:52 PM in reply to jimbomoron
Mammograms are not a treatment!
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lousgirl84
December 3, 2009 2:13 PM in reply to jimbomoron
jimbomoron. Nothing more to say with a name like that.
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Progressive Party
December 3, 2009 2:32 PM
Can we have a breakdown on the votes?
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Frog Leg
December 3, 2009 2:35 PM
I thought an amendment on mammograms brought by Vitter would be that he supervise each one personally, given his past shenanigans.
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